Save the last dance, Expats and Mexican Food in Congo.

Save the last dance, Expats and Mexican Food in Congo.

After my food adventures last Saturday with my hostess I went to a local ‘boite’ (nightclub), now I’ve been to a couple of bars since arriving in Kinshasa but they’ve always been a mix of expats and well to do locals.

As I entered this nightclub, it reminded me of the scene in save the last dance where Julia Styles walks into the club and everyone stares at the white girl, and wait in anticipation of amusement of her ‘white moves’ well -that was me.

However I did not fully disgrace myself, I even got a round of applause from a group as I departed the stage.  Now we’ve all seen girls who dance in the mirror at clubs, hell we’ve all shot a glance at ourselves to make sure we’re not looking as stupid as we feel at points.

But let me tell you the Congolese women take this to a whole new level. They vie for the positions directly in front of the mirror where they can watches themselves for hours....I literally saw a girl who did not take her eyes of herself in the time it took me to have 3  G&T’s.

Honestly, I cannot understand why they don’t just stay at home put some tunes on and do it there. I found this muchos bizarre indeed, especially as most of these women are shall we say ‘working’ (known here as Femmes Libre), you’d think they’d pay a little less attention to themselves but heyho.

So after a week of hellishly busy work, I went to a friend from the US embassy party, well a friend of a friend’s party. Anyone who has been travelling in SE Asia, will tell you how you can meet people, who you randomly befriend, who knows someone, who knows someone, who heard about this thing that we all should go to as a group and you all rock and it’s the more the merrier.

Well, the expat community in Kin la Poubelle  is like that here, you can happily rock up to a party with someone who kind of knows the host, and you will be welcomed with open arms and a cool beer. The expats out here are awesome, a really mix of people, but we all have something in common that binds us together, the fact that we all have the balls to drop our lives at home and to adventure on out here knowing few to no people.

It’s a sort of filtering mechanism that means almost everyone you meet is someone interesting and game for a laugh, and happy to enfold you into the group, which makes for a much more interesting time for everyone; this during a week where I have been alone in my big house has been a saving grace.

(Sorry I didn’t tell you mum that I was alone in the house – didn’t want you to worry.)

Saturday was spent chilling by my pool with a few of the people from Fridays party, which was only the 1^st time I’d actually spent any time in the pool here, except the one day that I spent in the sports club Elais, which has an epic 5m diving board, but was the first time I used my pool.

Now of the people I was with one was Mexican and one was from Texas, they LOVE Mexican food, so after we have sufficiently bored ourselves of pool and doing nothing, we jumped in the car to  go to the supermarket and attempt to make Mexican food.

Now this isn’t as crazy as it seems, the US diplomats here basically have a US address which mean they get tonnes of care packages from friends and family. This means that all the food stuff of my childhood: reeces, pancakes, Tostitos, betty crocker cake/cookie/brownie mix and TexMex ingredients are in plentiful supply. Needless to say these new friends turned out to be my best friends who could keep me hopped up on American goodies.

So we ended up having a Mexican dinner on the rooftop terrace of my friend’s apartment, overlooking the Congo river, as the sun set and a lightning storm hit Brazzaville on the other side of the river. –INSANELY COOL.